Folk Science

Submitted by admin on Fri, 2012-04-13 15:47

Sam Covill investigates how we balance our need for survival with educational advancement

‘Folk science’ is the
study of our intuitive human understanding of the world around us. Our ‘folk
science’ understanding of the world gives us two main faculties: one of social
game play, allowing us to predict the actions of friends and competitors, and
the other of objective reasoning and logic. They have allowed us to cope with
daily duties necessary for survival as well as to live through war, disease,
and famine.

Unfortunately, what
has been essential for our survival is now proving, in some cases, to be in
direct contradiction to the conscious involvement needed for our educational
advancement. The importance of being able to carry
out mundane day-to-day tasks essential to our survival, such as finding food
and shelter, can’t be understated. However, we need ‘objectively-thinking
problem solvers’ such as Newton, who shunned the study of social complexities
in favour of the study of the physical nature of the world, if we are to solve
the scientific problems that face humanity today.

Our natural mode of
learning is a predilection for social game play and competitiveness with peers.
Richard D. Alexander, an evolutionary biologist from the University of
Michigan, has suggested that population expansions occurred at times when we
had become masters of our environment. As a result, the importance of
competition for land and food became paramount and social interaction played an
integral part in this competition. The need for better understanding and
predictions of the actions of early man’s acquaintances catalysed the
development of built-in social skills such as reading non-verbal signals,
deciphering facial expressions, and sharing a language and ideology.

These skills are still
a part and parcel of everyday life. However, as we do these on ‘autopilot mode’,
it becomes very hard to break out of this predisposition and exploit a more
conscious attitude to learning about the world objectively, which is the
motivation for all science. For example, even young children can estimate and
describe the trajectory of a thrown object, such as a tennis ball, due to our
evolutionary knowledge of gravity’s effect, but people’s explanations of the
forces governing that ball's dynamics are often wrong. The majority believe
that the object is being propelled forward by a force that constantly acts on
the ball when in fact after it has left the thrower’s hand, we only have the
downward force of gravity and a small frictional force due to air resistance.

Not only is this
innate knowledge compromising our conceptual understanding of the physical
world but it acts as a massive distraction in the classroom. Children are much
more likely to engage in social game play that can distract them from
consciously engaging in problem solving or utilising their working memory
capacity. Many believe that the popularity of working in groups in schools does
not lend itself to the development of this way of thinking, but the sole pursuit
of individualistic learning could be disastrous. Therefore, a healthy balance
must be struck.

A good analogy of the disparity between
evolutionary need and educational advancement is the analysis of people with
schizotypal personalities (not to be confused with schizophrenia). This type of
personality is categorised by the fact that their brain does not filter out
external stimuli to the extent that the average person’s would. This can lead
to the person being classed as eccentric and ostracised for their strange
behaviour, reducing their ability to work effectively in group-led school work.
The reduced ability to filter sensory information in people with schizotypal
personalities could also lead to an overwhelming of the senses and a lack of hierarchical
importance of information that would make everyday tasks more difficult:
historically hunting and foraging. This may account for the relative rarity of
such personality types today. However, these people tend to be much more
creative and innovative, showing a progressive
approach to solving scientific problems. We should encourage these
students even though they may not participate as well in group work and in
general encourage those who think ‘outside the box’.

Better understanding
of innate knowledge and a strong link between this science and education could
affect a better learning environment for the next generation and ultimately a
progression in mankind’s scientific knowledge.